I made this same point on another thread. Bernanke is going to hand the White House to Hillary the same way Greenspan handed it to her husband. I can hear her now going around braying about the "worst economy in 85 years." As I said, another incompetent Bush appointee. Bush can do enough damage to the Republicans without Bernanke helping him.
Hillary is going to have such a mess on her hands, she will look so aged and ragged just after the first 6 months ! The simple solution will be to just throw money at "the problem". Let's see if she'll take the bait....and make that mistake. The alternative will be massive gov't spending cut-backs and lay-offs. What are the chances of that happening ?
I have to disagree with regard to Bernanke. He has not been in the job long enough for us to know how good a Fed Chair he will be, but it seems he is going to be quite good. He inherited a mess created by Greenspan's liquidity bubble and horrible deficits. Let's give him a chance.
its the Treasury, ie the US Gvt, whos making the mess... not the Fed... to compound, your OCC guys are clueless... and keeping such a low profile no one ever seems to mention them!?!... probably best for them...
Bernanke is an idiot. All he had to do was stay on message, be consistent, not interfere with the credit markets, and keep his mouth shut. The mandate of the federal reserve is to fight inflation - not to save financial speculators from their stupidity. Bernanke and his incredibly ill-timed liquidity injections...
Dr. Ben inherited the B.S. situation. If anyone wants to be pissed be pissed at the P.O.S. administration running this country. All they did was give this economy a shot of heroin. They let any merger happen that wanted too, laxed as restricition on financial lending, massive corporate tax cuts, massive employee benifit cuts. I could go on and on! As far as the market and the banks/lender it can go to hell in a hand basket for all I care. Let the lenders and bankers lose their jobs. WHO F'ing cares!!! They made so much damn money they could live 10 life times and not worry about financial security. The only thing I feel sorry about is all the employess that are losing there jobs because the dumbass money hungry retards running these companies wanted a quick fix to getting rich at any cost to the american people. To all the top dogs that ran this scherade you can kiss my ass and burn in hell! I say hang them in the town circle and diperse their money. This country is so F'ed its not even funny. As far as Dr. Ben, I say raise the rate or lower them it will not matter. The damage is done and it will take atleast 10 years until the pain is over. The revoling credit door has been slammed shut and welded. And now credit companies are frantically raising rates on anyone they can since they are not obligated to anything they promised in the past. With no more credit and peoples rates rising on all lines of credit. You can figure out what will happen next. Welcome to financial armagedon for the middle and small fry.
I was hoping Ben would undo the Greenspan liquidity hangover. No such luck. The bigger the bubble....
I honestly think he's trying. I think Greenspan tried to unwind it too. By moving interest rates up very slowly, and then holding them there right at "the edge of pain", most people, except those with their head in the sand or those who were in way over their head, we able to see that rates were going up, and they had ample opportunity to manage their affairs accordingly. For example, I'm willing to be there are many here at this site who had ARMs on their own homes, but saw the writing on the wall and refinanced to a fixed rate note. The worst thing the Fed could have done is to raise rates too rapidly, rather than wean us off it...effectively choking the engine, and so they took it up slow. Yet, they also moved it up consistently to get us away from the 1% money as fast as possible that we so badly needed after 9/11 but started to create a bubble. How bad would the real estate bubble have been if they hadn't consistently raised rates? You want to be mad at someone, be mad at the people who attacked the U.S., requring an infusion of cheap money. I believe that if you have a great big bubble, you can fix it by creating a smaller bubble, and then you can fix that one by making an even smaller bubble. The first big bubble was the tech stocks, which happened despite warnings of irrational exuberance. The second bubble was created as a by product of the collapse of the first bubble and 9/11. Weaning is painful. If you consider that we went through the tech bubble, then 9/11, and now we're (supposedly) in the midst of a housing "crash" while we are definitely in the middle of an on-going war, I think things are going well, because most people can find a job and a place to live. The USA is resiliant that way, and foriegn countries will always want to do business with us and loan us money over the long run. No, I don't work for the fed. SM
No. That's not correct. "The Federal Reserve's most critical role is to keep the economy healthy through the proper application of monetary policy." (http://www.frbsf.org/publications/federalreserve/fedinbrief/roles.html). Inflation is but one aspect of it. Moreover, the Fed's actions in the current credit crisis not to save speculators, but to ensure that that liquidity is still orderly enough for corporations and other legitimate consumers of credit to have access borrowing. The credit world, unlike equity, is massively important from a day-to-day perspective. Many healthy corporations draw on bank loans, revolvers, and debt for critical operating necessities.